


the girl who grew up too fast

by courfeyrock



Category: Spring Awakening - Sheik/Sater
Genre: Character Study, Child Abuse, Gen, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Suicide, it follows canon and then goes on
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-08
Updated: 2015-07-08
Packaged: 2018-04-08 07:03:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,187
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4295211
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/courfeyrock/pseuds/courfeyrock
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ilse is only a child when she leaves.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the girl who grew up too fast

**Author's Note:**

> i love ilse so so much and i'm so glad i finally wrote something about her that i like enough to post

Ilse is only a child when she leaves. At thirteen years old the beatings are too much - her father is too much - it's all too much until suddenly it becomes nothing at all. Everything passes almost in a routine manner. Ilse feels nothing, has to feel nothing to survive. But when she realizes that she has started to become numb – has stopped fighting and is beginning to let this be her life – that’s when she knows she has to get out.

She doesn't even think to pack - she doesn't have time to pack. Ilse is afraid that if she waits too long, she won't have the strength to go through with it.

She steals away in the dead of night – first pressing her ear to her parents’ door to make sure she heard her father’s snores. The ground is like glass under her feet - one misplaced step and everything would shatter into minuscule pieces that she'd never be able to put back where they belonged. 

Once she's outside, Ilse isn't sure what to do. The grass dampens her feet, and sends a chill up her spine. She's free. If all goes well, Ilse will never have to see her monstrous father or her uncaring mother ever again. The thrill doesn't last long, though. She's never had a plan, but she had always thought that a lack of a plan would make her life all the more exciting. Instead, it felt like the future was a never ending hole she'd just dropped down - no foreseeable way out of the darkness - no way back and nothing good looking forward. 

Still, anything must be better than what came before. She tries to be optimistic - Martha has told her that she is good at that. The lines of what is real and what is an act sometimes blur in Ilse's head. It occurs to her that she might not even know herself at all. Perhaps it would have been better to wait until she did before she decided to build a life for herself. 

As she runs away from her home - no - her house, her foot hits hard rock, and blood splatters across it like paint. Ilse decides that she needs a break, and sits down to gawk red-speckled gray. As the colors blur together, she thinks about the Bohemians. They had always been present in her life, but she'd never cared about them until she heard her mother speak of them in disdain, almost how she always spoke of Ilse. 

When she was younger, Ilse used to sneak out and see if she could find them. She never did, of course. Ilse never even had the guts to walk more than a few feet away from her house without permission.

Melchior used to humor her with tales of Priapia - a colony that supposedly spent a good amount of time near his house. She never knew for certain what parts of his stories were true, but they intrigued her all the same. Ilse wishes - she always has, that she could be one of them.

 _Maybe_ , she thinks, picking herself up and brushing the dirt off of her legs. _Maybe, I can._

* * *

At first, Priapia is glorious. The people are so full of mystery, and Ilse feels that the more she learns about them, the less she really knows. At first, this is entrancing. For weeks Ilse is caught up in their magic, living with nothing and feeling everything – having no ties to anyone but being irrevocably intertwined with each other. It’s exactly what Ilse has been missing in her life, and it’s everything she’s ever dreamed it would be.

The arrangement is perfect until everything that made it beautiful starts to make it terrifying. Ilse didn’t know, at first, what it really meant to be one of them – giving herself over – mind, body and soul. When they start to treat Ilse as one of their own, she stops belonging to herself. It is a slow sort of thing, every day it feels harder to breathe until Ilse realizes that she is suffocating. She has no control over herself any longer – ironic because that’s why she came to them – to gain control in a life where she had none.

The artists own her. If they want her to pose for them, she can’t say no. If they want her to fetch them supplies, she can’t say no. Anything they want from her, she has to say yes. Ilse doesn’t know what would happen if she defied them. She doesn’t want to know. They might hurt her. There have been a few incidents – she was heavily involved in the clean up – scrubbing at blood stains and bandaging wounds that will never really heal right. But that’s not even really what she cares about – what really makes Ilse shiver is that they might disown her – that she might be alone again.

Ilse can’t live without company. She needs someone to listen to or someone to prattle on to about her latest discover or love. She can’t be alone. She’d rather be back with her parents than alone.

Ilse has encounters almost daily that leave her trembling – men with their wandering hands and lingering touches and voices that get far too loud when she resists. Ilse tries to convince herself that it’s better than the situation with her father. She was right to leave – she had to be.

* * *

It keeps getting worse, but Johann Ferendorf is the last straw. She knows after that, that she will die if she stays any longer.

So she gets out. Ilse escapes, not knowing where she is going for the second time in her life – she wonders how many more times this will happen to her. She doesn’t think she can bear the thought of having to go through all of this again.

Stable was hardly the right word to describe Priapia, but it was a home, and they were a family. They’d trusted llse – taken her in, given her nourishment, given her a life, and all of a sudden she regrets leaving. But no, she couldn’t have stayed. The whole reason she lives is to be free, and she was anything but free back there. They’d given her no choice.

Ilse finds herself running through the woods again, the trees and sky all a gray blur – a dull backdrop to a life that’s been anything but. She finds herself quickly picking up speed, her legs numb beneath her, and she keeps going, until suddenly she spots him.

Moritz Stiefel. Moritz can be her ticket – her ticket to getting her childhood – her freedom back. Ilse watches him for a second, a rush of affection sweeping through her as she observes his movements. The shuffling of his feet, the twitching of his hands – he hasn’t changed a bit. Somehow, Ilse finds comfort in that.

* * *

First, she tries telling Moritz stories of Priapia. Ilse hopes that they will enchant Moritz as Melchior’s stories had once enchanted her.

She sees it, in his eyes. A slight glimmer – a small thread of hope that only needs to be pulled – so she keeps going, keeps talking and not even realizing when she loses him, not even noticing that his mind is already made up. A dark cloud seems to come across Moritz’s field of comprehension as she attempts to get him to come with her – she is acting too desperate, maybe, but she _needs_ him, and for a second it almost seems like he needs her too.

But she breaks – she can’t bear the thought of loneliness anymore and she snaps, sprinting back into the darkness so that Moritz won’t see the tears in her eyes.

* * *

Ilse is the one who finds the body – of course she is – she runs to him as soon as the gunshot goes off. Her body grows boiling hot and she realizes – she _knows_ what happened and she should have seen it coming – how could she have missed the signs when there were so many of them?

There is blood everywhere. Streaks of red coat the ground and the trees and Moritz isn’t Moritz – he can’t be Moritz – and pieces of him are everywhere and Ilse’s going to vomit, she can’t stay, she can’t look at him, not when it’s partially her fault and—

The gun rests, black and shining in his hand. She is afraid to move closer – afraid to touch him because it might make it real, but she _needs_ the gun, she needs a reminder, she can’t – she won’t let herself become like Moritz.

His hands are too cold, and the gun is even colder. Ilse’s hands are shaking as she grasps it, and she imagines what it must have been like for Moritz. Careful to keep her hand away from the trigger, she rests the gun in her mouth, feeling the frigid metal against her lips. It’s all too real, and for a moment Ilse thinks that it may be better just to give up – to join Moritz. Maybe they could play pirates again, maybe things would be just like they used to be. Maybe, in death, she could get her old life back.

Or maybe not. Just as Ilse’s finger hits the trigger, she decides that she can’t take that risk. She can’t let someone find her body like she found Moritz’s. She has to – she has to prevent this from happening to anyone else, ever again – and that includes herself.

* * *

Moritz’s funeral is the first time in six years that Ilse has seen Melchior. To her horror, she arrives late. Partially because no one told her when it would start, and she wouldn’t –no – couldn’t bring herself to ask anyone, and partially because she had lost her ability to find her way around the area after so long.

Ilse has picked an array of flowers from beside the stream in the forest, where she and Moritz used to play as children. She sets them in the coffin, not daring to look at the body. She’s seen too much already – she can’t bear to relive that day in the woods.

The second Ilse turns away from Moritz, Melchior’s arms are around her. Her shoulder becomes slightly damp, and she realizes with a jolt that he is crying. Almost instantly, tears spring to her eyes as well. She stays in his arms for a while – finding solace in them, even if they are only a temporary haven.

“Please,” Melchior begins. “Please, Ilse, if you need anything, come and find me. My family doesn’t mind company, ever, and I, well, I don’t mean to offend you but if your living situation isn’t entirely stable, I’m here.”

“I will,” Ilse whispers, her voice as simultaneously careful and dangerous as the promise she is making.

* * *

It’s nearly midnight when Ilse visits the graveyard. She knows Melchior will be there, and really, she should be by his side already. She shouldn’t have let him find out on his own.. If Wendla’s death tore her apart, she could barely imagine what it did to him.

Ilse finds Melchior exactly where she expects to, kneeling by Wendla’s grave. Ilse’s heart lurches when she notices the blade in his hand and the strange calm in his eyes.

“Melchior!” she shouts, racing to him. “Please – please don’t!”

Slowly, Melchior’s eyes turn to meet hers. “What?”

“The—” Ilse points to the blade. “I thought you might—”

Melchior’s eyes widen. “Oh no – oh God no, Ilse. I thought about it, I did. But I can’t. Not after them. It seems almost – I don’t know – like I'd be betraying them.”

“I know,” says Ilse, relieved. “I feel like – I feel like I have to live for them, I—” Ilse pauses as something occurs to her. She and Melchior are the only ones left from their childhood games. They are both the only connections to the past that the other has.

“You – you said I could come to you if I needed someone,” Ilse began. “And I do. I hate to admit it, Melchior, but I can’t be alone, and the artists… they aren’t what I thought.”

“I’m sorry, Ilse. I feel as though, maybe, I’m responsible for that. Those stories I told you – none of them were true, you know. I just liked seeing how happy they made you. I didn’t know it would come to this.”

Ilse smiles, a salty tear running over her lips. “I know. And it’s okay, really. I would have run away to them even if you hadn’t told me anything. Without your stories, I might not have had the courage to run away at all and in spite of everything, I’m glad that I did.”

Melchior nodded a little. “And I’m glad for you. I wish – I wish I could help you. But I don’t think – I don’t know if _I’m_ even welcome in the Gabor household anymore. They sent me to a reformatory, as I’m sure you’ve heard.”

“Well,” Ilse began. “I guess being lost with someone is better than being lost alone.”

For the first time since they were kids, Ilse saw Melchior smile. “I guess you’re right.”

**Author's Note:**

> so like.... i know it hasn't even been 10 days yet and i said i'm doing camp nanowrimo so i won't be posting anything till the end of the month but,,, HERE WE ARE. i'm still doing nano, but i was rly ahead and also not feelin it so i decided to take a break to write some sa because i have no self control.
> 
> kudos and comments mean the world to me, and as always, feel free to send prompts or just chat with me on my [tumblr](http://mohritz.tumblr.com/)


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